Our own weird version of "24"

My phone and inbox on Facebook are going nuts, so I'm going to blog about it so that I only have to say it ONE more time. :)

About six weeks ago, Courtney (my 12 year-old) came down with what appeared to be allergic conjunctivitis--basically, an eye infection from allergies. It took two visits with a pediatric opthalmologist and three different types of drops to clear it up, but we kicked it.

Last week, it seemed to come back, so we started the drops again. After several days of each of the previous three drops with no results, I took her back to the opthalmologist yesterday afternoon, thinking it was probably good-old fashioned bacterial "pink eye" this time and we just weren't using the right kind of drops. He looked her over and discovered that it wasn't an infection at all, but iritis, which is an inflammation of the iris. Then he dilated her eyes and found that her optic nerve was also inflamed. This was a pretty good cause for alarm because that is often an indicator of bigger things going on in her body, especially in children. I was given a big long list of things it could be...from irritable bowel disorder to Lyme Disease to tuberculosis to sarcoidosis....but the biggest concern was MS. Before we left his office, his staff had made appointments for this morning for an MRI, chest x-rays, and a whole big mess of bloodwork.

I think the Dr. thought I was in denial or something because I just wasn't worried. (If you read my post from yesterday, you'll see why I really believe I wasn't worried. God is good.) I'm not going to say I wasn't scared for brief moments about all the possibilites, but I just kept coming back to an overwhelming feeling of peace about it. I wasn't certain the test results would come back clear, I was just ok with knowing God already knew and would take care of us.

So Jason and I loaded her up this morning and took her to Houston NW Medical Center to have all these tests run. We figured, given the holiday weekend, we wouldn't know anything till we go back to see the opthalmologist on Tuesday. This afternoon, though, he called me to tell me that both MRIs and chest x-rays came back perfectly clear. Praise God! We still have to wait for the blood work to be sure it's absolutely nothing at all, but the MRI was the one he was really worried about.

The plan now is to continue giving her the steroid eye drops (which are already working like a charm) every 2 hours until we see him again on Tuesday morning and pray this never comes back again.

With all that said, it has been a ridiculously crazy month at our house, and I'm ready for a break! Maybe a break in Australia.....hmmmm.